European National Myths Reflected in the Fantasy Works—Take The Lord of the Rings as an Example

Abstract
The movies The Lord of the Rings trilogy’s aggressive release world wide arouses people’s great interest in fantasy literature. At the same time, as the original fiction The Lord of the Rings also arouses people’s interest in research. Actually, the fiction created by famous British author and linguist J.R.R.Tolkien already attracts much attention in the author’s ages. Many people want to interpret the monumental work from different perspectives. Someone wants to explore it through its religious metaphor. Some wants to do research based on its’ mythical foundation. Someone wants to integrate author’s life experience to analyze the theme the author wants to express. But the thesis will focus on the analysis on the close relationship between the fiction and Norse mythology to interpret the fiction.
This thesis employs the theory of mythological archetype criticism to compare various kinds of figures in The Lord of the Rings and Norse mythology. The thesis first gives brief introduction to Norse mythology including its history and the spreading areas. At the same time some important figures and features of the myth will be discussed. Then the thesis will do detailed comparisons between the figures in The Lord of the Rings and counterpart figures in Norse mythology to analyze the similarities and differences. Finally it comes to the conclusion that The Lord of the Rings is a unique story. The story is created on the basis of Norse mythology, at the same time blending myth stories from different races and in different times.
Key words: The Lord of the Rings, Norse mythology, figure comparison
摘        要
电影《指环王》三部曲的热映在全世界范围内激起了人们对奇幻文学的巨大兴趣。同时作为电影原著的小说《指环王》，也同样引起了人们的研究兴趣。其实，这部由英国著名作家、语言学家约翰•罗纳德•瑞尔•托尔金所创作的小说在作者所处的年代便已经受到极大的关注。许多人从许多不同的角度尝试对这部巨著进行解读，有人从它的宗教隐喻中进行探索，也有人从它的神话根基中上去进行研究，也有人结合作者的人生经历分析小说想要传达的主题。而本文将着重分析小说与北欧神话之间的紧密关系来对其进行解读。
本文借助于神话原型批判的理论，对指环王与北欧神话中的各种形象进行对比讨论，以求得出一些结论。文章首先对北欧神话本身进行了简单的介绍，包括北欧神话的历史，传播地域等。同时对北欧神话中的一些形象及神话的特点也进行了说明。而后文章便对指环王小说中的形象与北欧神话中的对应形象进行详细的对比，对它们之间的相同点以及不同点进行分析。最后得出结论指环王是作者以北欧神话为基础，同时糅合不同民族，不同时代的神话故事而创造出的独具一格的故事。
关键词：指环王，北欧神话，形象对比